Satan and the Bible

One day Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath (see Luke 13:10-17). There was a woman in attendance who, for eighteen years, had been bent over and was unable to straighten up. Her deformity, as Jesus will later point out, was something Satan had done to her. Jesus noticed her plight and healed her.

The reaction of the synagogue leader was quick: he condemned the healing. Jesus had violated the prohibitions on working on Saturday, something the Bible was very clear about. In fact, it’s part of the Ten Commandments (see Exodus 20:8-11). There’s even the story from Numbers 15:32-36 of a person being stoned to death at God’s command for even so minor a violation of the Sabbath as gathering wood. The synagogue leader took the Bible seriously and believed it was to be obeyed always. Jesus was without excuse. The synagogue leader knew the Bible was the word of God and he knew what it said. He knew his position was unassailable.

So what would Satan do? Agree with Jesus? Or join the synagogue leader in condemning Jesus for breaking one of the Ten Commandments and ignoring the very word of God?

Satan believes the Bible is the word of God. He agrees with the bumper sticker, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it for me.”
A popular pursuit in my high school days was hunting through the Bible to find a “life verse.” I never really liked that fad. Shouldn’t one’s life be based on the entire revelation of God rather than one small snippet? I thought limiting myself to a single passage, like a cliché inscribed upon the page of a calendar, was just silly. Likewise, it seemed to me that it would be so easy for such a verse to be pulled out of context.

Forced by my youth group to pick something, in my teenage rebelliousness, I wound up picking Ecclesiastes 10:19:

A feast is made for laughter,
wine makes life merry,
and money is the answer for everything

It seemed perfect for my purposes: ludicrous , devoid of context, and funny. People were appalled, but had difficulty criticizing my choice since it was, after all, from the Bible. And how can one criticize the Bible?

Satan has read and studied the Bible. He can quote it. Satan’s use of scripture in some ways may be similar to what I did with that passage.

In the story of Satan’s temptation of Jesus, we find Satan easily quoting a passage from the Bible at Jesus. What does his use of Scripture—and Jesus’ responses, using the Bible in retaliation—tell us about Satan’s beliefs about the word of God—and his understanding of it?

The story of the Devil tempting Jesus appears in Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13 and Luke 4:1-13. The author of Hebrews comments about Jesus’ temptation in Hebrews 2:18 and 4:15, but without specifying when or which temptation may be in view. Luke 4:13 comments that “When the Devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time” while John states at the end of his gospel that “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” (John 21:25) Combined, these passages suggest the possibility that Jesus faced other times of temptation beyond what is recorded by the New Testament authors.

The lone quotation that Satan makes from the Bible is recorded in both Matthew and Luke:

Then the Devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“ ‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” (Matthew 4:5-6; Luke 4:9-11)

Satan quotes from Psalm 91:11-12. He does so based on his understanding of it as part of a messianic psalm. That is, like most scholars of Jesus’ day, Satan understands it as a promise given to God’s son in his incarnation as the Messiah. That’s why Satan begins the temptation as a challenge, “if you are the son of God,” before telling him to toss himself off the temple and demonstrate that fact.

But Satan is not a perfect biblical scholar. Paul writes, “None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8). Satan is understood, generally, as being the ruler of this age. Paul seems to so reference him in 2 Corinthians 4:4, where he also informs us that Satan blinds unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the Gospel.
Using the Bible like the Pharisees

According to the Gospel of John (John 8:42-44), Jesus describes the Pharisees as being the children of Satan in their beliefs and practices.

So how did the Pharisees interpret the Bible? Consider their conclusions about the Messiah: who he would be, where he would come from, and how he would act. They had created a well-developed character study. Like an author preparing to create a novel or screenplay, they’d made a list of things that the Messiah character must do and ways that he must behave. For example, he would be a stickler for the Law. He would condemn sinners. He would rail against the Roman government.

By their estimation, Jesus failed to live up to what they had decided they knew was necessary for someone to be the genuine savior of Israel. He was loose about keeping the Sabbath. He spent time with disreputable people. He was not overtly political.

Based on their list, Jesus did not match their most important character requirements and so they concluded what was only reasonable and obvious: that he could not possibly be the Messiah. Since Jesus could not be the promised savior, they had to find alternative explanations for those things in his performance that otherwise would seem to confirm his identity. Miracles were explained away as the works of Satan. What else could they be, since Jesus’ actions contradicted vital parts of their list? They could not imagine the possibility that their criteria was off in any way. They never entertained the thought that they might have misunderstood something. They were certain that what they had decided about the Bible’s meaning was identical to what the Bible actually meant.

When Jesus preached, “you have heard it said, but I say to you” they did not hear Jesus correcting their misreading of Scripture. Rather, they heard Jesus contradicting Scripture. In their minds, they knew what the Bible said and what Jesus was saying was different from what they knew it said. Therefore, he had to be evil, since there were no other possible interpretations of the Bible but those that they had already decided upon. Their interpretations were obviously, unassailably correct. No other reading was even imaginable, unless one wanted to twist the Bible like a pretzel—and that’s precisely what Jesus was doing as far as they were concerned.

Pharisees took the Bible seriously. They were committed to the Bible. The Bible was the word of God and must be obeyed without fail.

Satan takes the Bible just as seriously. He believed when he quoted the Bible to Jesus that he was making a powerful argument. If Jesus really were the son of God, then he would not be able to resist the Bible—the very word of God—and would be forced to obey it.

When he told Jesus to jump off the temple, he had every reason to expect that Jesus would have no choice but to do just that. He was doubtless surprised when Jesus said no, creating cognitive dissonance in the Devil’s mind. He forced Satan to consider an entirely different way of understanding the verses. Jesus opened an interpretation of Satan’s quotation that had never crossed his mind before. Satan had taken the passage in Psalms as a given, as a promise, as even a command. He hadn’t considered the possibility that it could not, in fact, be used as a blank check against God’s account.

To repeat: Satan is not infallible as a biblical scholar. His own biases get in his way as much as they did for the Pharisees—or, if we’re honest, with us. But Satan, like most Christians and like the Pharisees before them, believes the Bible and accepts it as the Word of God. He views it as authoritative. He is certain that if he can demonstrate something biblically, he has proven something, and that it cannot be argued against. This belief is also clear from the fact that Jesus, in responding to each of Satan’s temptations, quotes the Bible at Satan, because Jesus knows that Satan believes the Bible and accepts it as valid, truthful, and an authority that must be accepted.

When the serpent speaks to Eve in Genesis 3, the serpent does not deny the words of God that were given to her. Rather, he asks her a question about them—he suggests by his question, not that God didn’t say what he said. Rather he asks her if she has really understood what he said. Do God’s words mean what she thinks they mean?

In and of itself, such a question is not wrong. In fact, we will later find Jesus asking the Pharisees, his disciples, and others who are around him, just that sort of question.

So we can be confident that Satan believes the Bible and studies it. He wants to figure out just what it says.

However, Satan approaches it counter to something Paul says about the spirit of the law verses the letter of the law (see 2 Corinthians 3:6, Romans 2:29, 7:6). The Pharisees—along with those who think like them today—approach the Bible much as a lawyer might approach a deposition or the statements of a witness. They want the list that will tell them what to do in all eventualities; they want the rules laid out so they know what they can’t do, and so they can figure out what they can do without violating any of the other rules. Satan thinks like a lawyer–or an engineer—or the child who notices if you don’t play the game exactly right, or if you don’t read the familiar bedtime story exactly the same way you read it last night.

The essence of this sort of approach to the Bible, with its focus on discovering the rules, is that such readers get locked into thinking about those rules rather than on what’s right. They miss the whole point; they miss the stories; they miss the revelation of God. They forget that Jesus and Paul argue that the law—all laws—can be summed up by “love your neighbor as yourself” (see Matthew 22:34-40, Mark 12:28-31, Romans 13:9, Galatians 5:14). If one focuses on what’s best for others, remarkably one doesn’t have any inclination to harm them. Love fulfills all rules automatically, with not much thought needed. The details take care of themselves.

But of course Satan doesn’t see that, can’t imagine it matters, and thus misses the whole point of the Bible in his obsession with rules and regulations.

Want to learn more about how the Devil thinks? Buy my book, What Would Satan Do? The Devil’s Theology: